After a two week break to say goodbye to Father Paul Lesupati and to welcome Fathers Daniel McGrath and Pius Nwiyi, I would like to return to what I started a few weeks ago, namely unpacking our mission statement, which, as a reminder, is on the inside cover of our bulletin each week.  Having reflected on the word “mission”, I would like for us to focus on the following words that begin to describe this mission: “to build a fervent community of intentional and dedicated missionary disciples of the Risen Lord.”

Perhaps we can start with the word “build”.  The use of this verb can be a little confusing, as though the goal of having a fervent community of missionary disciples is the sole product of our efforts.  As Christians, we can appreciate theologically that this is not the case, for it is the Lord who ultimately does the building.  I am reminded of this every time I pray the following words from Psalm 127: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” (Ps 127:1) This should give us some comfort, knowing ultimately that it will be the Lord who brings about the growth.

At the same time, our efforts matter.  We can do (or not do) things that can prevent or slow the Lord from doing His work of building us up, and there are things that we can do that allow His building to come about more quickly.  So as we consider this aspect of the mission, we are called to have faith in the Lord and His desire (which is far greater than ours) to build us up into a fervent community, while at the same time to have the commitment to following the divine architect’s plan for building this community by obeying His plan and working diligently at the task in which He has asked us to cooperate.

In the series on praying the Mass, I hope this point came across more than once.  When we come to Mass, the Lord does something remarkable every time.  We hear God speaking to us in the Word of God, and He becomes present – Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, in the Eucharist.  And yet, we sometimes just drift through Mass, walking away feeling dissatisfied, unaffected by what has taken place.  When the liturgy is celebrated properly and reverently, there is nothing lacking in what the Lord gives to us, but the fruitfulness depends on a variety of things, including our attention and willingness to actually pray intentionally during Mass.  It also helps when we have good music, a beautiful church, good preaching, etc., as those elements can also assist us to be more open to experiencing the beauty and power of the Mass.  But if we just show up, unwilling to engage, we will likely be disappointed because we are not willing to put in the effort to let the Mass transform us.

This is true with regards to living the mission of building a community of fervent disciples.  We all must be willing to be invested far more than just showing up to Mass and putting our donation into the collection.  Those can and do contribute to the mission, but there is much more to it.  So much more!  And we will continue exploring that next week! 

Father Alford     

Feast Day: July 7^th  

“Tekakwitha” means “she who bumps into things.” Sadly, this is not a fond and funny name our little mohawk girl got from her mom and dad during a clumsy toddlerhood. She only received that name at the age of four, her mom and dad and baby brother having all perished in an outbreak of smallpox. (Tekakwitha was left scarred and with injured vision, hence the bumping into things and the covering she would wear over her head for the rest of her life). 

When she was born, she was instead called Teiorakwate, meaning “Sunshine”. Her father, Kenneronkwa, was the chief of the Mohawk village and her mom, Kahenta, was not a Mohawk but an Algonquin, captured earlier in her own life, and then assimilated into the (diversifying, because of such captives) village of Ossernenon. Few in any of the Iriquois tribes (the Mohawk being one of them) had converted to Christianity. Consider that it was just a few decades before this that Isaac Jogues and John de Brebeuf and others were martyred while trying to bring the Gospel to this same people. But Kahenta had been baptized a Catholic and taught the faith by French missionaries who had come to her people at Trois-Riviéres. 

Little Teiorakwate was mesmerized by her mother’s prayers and stories about Jesus, and little Tekakwitha would often return to those memories, trying to pray on her own as she grew. But perhaps what she recalled more than anything was the transformation that Jesus had brought to the sufferings her mother endured, which He could also bring to hers. She was adopted by her aunt and uncle and moved a short distance away. They would only live there a few more years before the French invaded (competing with the Dutch for furs) and burned their new village. More sufferings. More loss. More relocations. 

Still, this brought the young woman “who bumps into things” to bump into Christ once again. She was captivated by the Jesuit missionaries who were now near at hand. They had learned her language, they spoke of Jesus with images and parables that fit her own culture, they told her how the practices of her own people could be dedicated to a God Who had dedicated Himself entirely for her, who was also disfigured, who lost everything as well. In 1669, when she was 13, the Mohican warriors launched their own attack against the French outpost of Caughnawaga. Tekakwitha and some of the other girls worked alongside of Fr. Jean Pierron to tend the wounded and bury the dead. 

Something during these years started germinating in Tekakwitha’s soul. Perhaps it was the staunch example of Fr. Pierron. Perhaps it was the (few) other Christians in the village. Keteri, named after St. Catherine of Sienna at her own baptism, would feel the same persecution that beforehand perhaps she was edified by. Perhaps it was the mysterious work of grace, for in any case, at the age of 17 she refused an arranged marriage to a young Mohawk man. It was at least unexpected if not unprecedented, but she spoke of being dedicated to Jesus, of He being her only husband. This, and the rest of her story, she told to a visiting priest who formally taught her the catechism before her entrance into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil of 1676, April 18^th. 

Shortly after embracing the faith, she moved a final time to a community of Christian Native Americans. She took on tremendous mortifications of cold, heat, and sleeping on thorns – traditional practices, now offered to Jesus – things at first questioned by the priests serving there. Fr. Cholonec was especially slow to applaud her sacrifices. The Devil can easily twist those practices that draw attention to ourselves. But Keteri’s response was unequivocal: “I will willingly abandon this miserable body to hunger and suffering, provided that my soul may have its ordinary nourishment.” Surely she had experienced much suffering in her body. Even more surely had she experienced the deepest and most lasting nourishment in Christ alone. 

At the age of 24 she died in the arms of her closest friend during Holy Week. Her final words: “Jesus, Mary, I love you.” And then Fr. Cholonec records something amazing: “This face, so marked and swarthy, suddenly changed about a quarter of an hour after her death, and became in a moment so beautiful and so white that I observed it immediately (for I was praying beside her) and cried out. . . . I admit openly that the first thought that came to me was that Catherine at that moment might have entered into heaven, reflecting in her chaste body a small ray of the glory of which her soul had taken possession.”

– Fr. Dominic recently participated in many of the different processions around our diocese connected with the National Eucharistic Procession. They were splendid, beautiful, packed, special … but the reality is that Our Lord is always present to us in every Tabernacle! How often do I look for my “ordinary nourishment” in bodily food, in comforts, in health. St. Keteri “Who bumps into things” shows us to instead risk everything on Jesus. 

Last weekend, we bid a grateful, though sad, farewell to Father Paul Lesupati as he transitions to his new parish assignment in Quincy.  But our sorrow is replaced with the joy of being able to welcome not just one, but two new priests to our parish this weekend, Father Daniel McGrath, and Father Pius Nwiyi.

As with Father Paul, Father Daniel McGrath will be beginning his life as a priest here with us at the Cathedral as a newly ordained priest.  Although this is certainly not the first assignment for Father Pius, it is technically his first parish assignment in the United States (though he has been living in Chicago for the past few years).  So for both of them, being here will be a new beginning, and I am personally grateful for the opportunity that we all have to welcome them as they prepare to experience the various aspects of pastoral ministry that they will be invited into while here at the Cathedral.

When a priest comes to a parish, he has as lot to learn.  He has to learn the normal routine for celebrating the sacraments, where to find various things in the sacristy and throughout the Rectory, how to adjust to living in common with other priests, learning names of parishioners, and the list goes on.  A lot of that takes place behind the scenes, so the parishioners might only be exposed to a small amount of what this transition entails.  For many, they ask questions like – “How long does he preach?”, “Will he be loud enough for us to hear – will we be able to understand him?”, “Can we relate to him?”  Of course, we want our priests to be effective in their preaching, reverent as they celebrate Mass, compassionate in the confessional, joyful when greeting people after Mass.  But I invite all of us to realize that this transition does not always take place all at once, and to have patience, always giving them the benefit of the doubt, and most importantly, praying for them.  As parishioners, we can sometimes feel the burden of having to get to know another new priest, but with all due respect, your transition to welcoming a new priest is fairly minor in comparison to all that they are going through.  For many of us, we see the priests for an hour, maybe slightly more, each weekend, and we go back to our daily lives, often not thinking much about them or the parish.  For these new priests, this is their entire life, it is always on their minds, it is all encompassing.  Taking all of this on is a lot, so please be understanding of all they are going through, especially these first few months.

As the pastor to these new priests, I feel a great sense of responsibility to help them in this transition.  Sure, I want them to “do the work” or parish life, but they are not here just to work.  I want them to be holy, happy, healthy priests, and to the extent that they are just that, they will be all the more effective in serving the many needs of our parish.

With that in mind, I bring to your attention again the three Hail Mary’s that I have asked us to pray each day.  Recall that one of those three Hail Mary’s is for the clergy of the parish.  Perhaps over the next month or so, you could begin that Hail Mary by saying: “For the clergy of our parish, especially for Father Daniel McGrath and Father Pius Nwiyi, that they be holy, happy, and healthy priests…Hail Mary…”  The other clergy of the parish are happy to let the attention be given to our new priests, as we all know how you have and continue to pray for us each day.  For me personally, I have no doubt that I am holier, happier, and healthier as a priest than ever before, and I believe firmly that your prayers have helped with that significantly, and I know your prayers will likewise help our two new priests in growing in these ways as well.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: July 7^th 

People were used to Jesus working miracles. 

But it’s a bit of a bigger shock when your neighbor does one. But that is exactly what we see in the New Testament! Luke 9:49 tells us that John came running up to Jesus: “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” Only a few verses later, he would be doing the same. Luke 10:17: “The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!”” That’s not a fluke or mistake! Jesus reaffirms that He intends His Church to do what He does: “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.” He only amplifies this with the promise of the Holy Spirit in John 14:12: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” 

But alongside of this, Our Lord also cautions us to not to grow attached to dramatic displays of power or forget that it is by His power that any miracles are accomplished. Luke 9:52 “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” St. Paul would remind the Corinthians of this some years later when they also were in danger of growing vain, forgetting that it was from God’s abundance, and for God’s purposes, that they had received such astonishing gifts. 

“And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

– 1 Cor 12:28-13:3

About three years ago, Pope Francis quoted this passage of St. Paul when establishing a new lay ministry of Catechist. Some are still called to be apostles, prophets, to work miracles and heal and speak in tongues (and all of these can be beautiful works of love) but some are also called to the humble work of teaching and catechizing, and this can also build of Christ’s body in love! Now, local Churches are still working on the process and steps that should be involved in forming someone as an official catechist – they are instituted for life after all! – but our Blessed that we celebrated this week shows us just how far even the simple love of teaching the faith may take us!

Peter To Rot [pronounced “Tow Rote”] was a fun loving boy, one of the first to grow up a Catholic, in his village in Papua New Guinea. His pastor asked if he might be called to be a priest, but in the end he got married to his beloved wife Paula, and soon became the father to three children (though one died as an infant), and after three years of studying, started work as a catechist in his village. And then 1942 came, and the Japanese invasion of their island. Bombs fell on their village, the first time many had seen an airplane, and their loving shepherd Fr. Laufer was carried off to a prison camp. He shook Peter’s hand as they took him away, “”I am leaving all my work here in your hands. Look after these people well. Help them, so that they don’t forget about God.”

And he did. He gathered them each day to pray and learn the faith together, encouraging his fellow villagers when they were forced to hide in caves, and praying with the sick and dying. Christianity was outlawed, men were told to take second wives, but Peter would not lead them astray nor fail to say that such was a sin, “The Japanese cannot stop us loving God and obeying his laws! We must be strong and we must refuse to give in to them.” He was arrested and maltreated. His Bible, catechism, song book, notebooks, and two crucifixes were confiscated. His wife and little children visited him in prison, and a few others too, during which he would say “If it is God’s will, I’ll be murdered for the faith. I am a child of the church and therefore for the church I will die.” 

And he did. A martyr for the importance of prayer, a martyr for the holiness of marriage. And he was just a catechist.

– Fr. Dominic was instituted as a lector, and acolyte, as preliminary steps towards priestly ordination. But the instituted ministry of catechist will not be something primarily given to men preparing for priesthood. How might our church, and our own lives, look different in a few decades if this is just the beginning of an outpouring of lay people called by God to consecrate themselves as catechists for the good of the Church and glory of God?!  

This weekend, we bid our farewell to Father Paul Lesupati, who has served here at the Cathedral as Parochial Vicar for the past two years.  We have been blessed with his ministry and we will most certainly miss him as he begins a new assignment at St. Peter Parish in Quincy, IL.

I will personally miss having Father Paul around the house as he has been an absolute delight with whom to share life and ministry.  Several years ago, when Father Jeff Grant, Pastor of Blessed Sacrament, contacted me about a prospect that he had met while on sabbatical in Kenya, I was a little skeptical.  Anytime you welcome somebody to the diocese who is not from the diocese, you wonder how well they will fit, if this will be a place where they can flourish, if they will be able to learn our culture in order to minister effectively or not.  When I finally met Father Paul for the first time in the airport, my concerns were set at ease, as I found in him a joyful and humble man truly open to following the Lord.  I had the privilege of serving as Father Paul’s Vocation Director for his four years of seminary formation, and when asked if I would welcome him as a Parochial Vicar, I did not hesitate to say yes.

Before meeting Father Paul, I knew absolutely no Swahili, a language common in East Africa.  I still only know just a few words and phrases, but one I know well is Baba Paroko, which is the Swahili term for Pastor, or father of the parish.  Father Paul uses this greeting almost every time he sees me, and I will certainly miss that.  I have also enjoyed his infectious smile and that joyful laugh that he lets our regularly.

I told Father Paul the other day that a priest’s first assignment will be one that he will never forget.  I still recall fondly my first assignment, and how I learned much of what I know about being a priest during those formative years.  And I have no doubt Father Paul will look back fondly on his time here.  I know for sure that he will look back with gratitude on you, the parishioners of the Cathedral, for being so welcoming to him, for loving him, and helping him to learn to be a priest, giving him valuable experience that will carry him to other places and to many more people.

In that regard, I express my gratitude to all of you for the role this parish has played, not just in helping Father Paul, but the many, many priests who have come through this parish, many of whom had their beginnings here.  They have all gone on to serve in various capacities, no doubt better off for the time they spent serving here.  As the mother church of the diocese, we have had the joy of helping so many “learn to walk” as priests, and equipping them for the good work they are doing in every corner of our diocese.  While it is sad for us to see these beloved priests go, we can be grateful that God has placed them among us, and that we have helped not just them, but the people they now serve, and will serve, in growing closer to Jesus, and being better prepared for that great reunion where we will all be together again in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Farewell, my dear friend, Father Paul!  May God bless you abundantly in your future ministry, and may you always know of our prayers for you, and we humbly ask your continued prayers for us!

Father Alford     

Feast Day: June 30^th 

Some saints live simple lives growing in prayer or charity; some head off on extraordinary adventures or endure unthinkable challenges to remain faithful to Christ, and some of them simply boggle our minds. Introducing Ramon, or Raymond, Llull.

We start in Mallorca, a little Island then part of the Kingdom of Catalon, sort of halfway between Barcelona, Spain and Algiers, Algeria (actually, that’s not a bad cultural description as well: the island was a crazy mix of Christian and Muslim culture and population). Our man Ramon is  married, with two kids, but is living the life of a troubadour and aspiring poet, singing ballads about love and chivalry instead of living those virtues by being faithful and helpful to his wife. You get the picture: crazy outfits, fancy banquets, wild imagination, tremendous intelligence, flighty, goofy, carefree, empty… 

And then one evening before going to bed while crafting another piece of love poetry, he was carried into a vision of Christ crucified. He saw the suffering, the love, the blood, the gift that Christ gave us all on that afternoon outside of Jerusalem. And then he saw the vision again, and again, and again, and again. Five times he found himself at Golgotha, each time absorbing more deeply than he ever had before, the reality of the crucifixion and the realness of Christ. And as he returned to the waning sunshine and poetic musings of Mallorca, he knew his life could not continue down that same road.

He was 31 years old in the Year of Our Lord 1263 when he committed his life entirely to bringing others to Christ. He sold his possessions, went on the Camino de Santiago, and then began a decade long effort to learn Arabic, and all that he could of the philosophy and tenants of Islam. His goal was to bring them to the Catholic faith, and his prodigious mind was not content with the usual logical arguments or typical appeals to scripture or spirituality. He wanted a system that brought all those things together – poetry, mysticism, philosophy, common sense, saints and stories and symbols – something accessible to sovereign or simpleton. 

Once more it was a divine inspiration that changed everything. He was, as typical of those years, living a hermitical life up on Piug de Randa and had a second vision. All those years of study, all those different languages, all his time in meditation were somehow synthesized and he came away not just with clarity for the continued mission of his life but also a glimpse of the glorious truth of God and how that is available to every single human mind. 

I will start with the missionary efforts because they’re far easier to describe: He began traveling to European Universities and meeting with Popes and Kings to try and establish language schools that would equip missionaries to head into Muslim lands carrying the Gospel. He went himself to Tunis, preached to the Saracens, got himself captured and imprisoned and sent back, only to do so again and again. He wrote books to educate children, and novels to depict the Christian life in story, and mystical works describing the life of prayer and how prayer could win far more souls than any amount of military might. 

But in his mind all these things were threads of a bigger, more glorious, God-grounded tapestry. Again and again over those same years he tried to put into writing the “art”, as he called it that connected all his efforts, but really all truth itself together … and like every other mystic, he struggled to put it into words. He would start with attributes everyone can agree are supreme – goodness, eternity, wisdom, etc. – and would drill into these characteristics, showing that each branched in three directions, or dimensions. The Trinity, the Christian understanding of God, was discoverable in every most fundamental idea!  He would lecture so excitedly on this point: you could begin talking with someone at any of these various points that the human mind naturally approaches, and the truth itself would beautifully grow towards the Triune God. He constructed mechanisms that you could turn to any conceptual starting point and which would link truth to truth to truth pointing the way to God.

He may have been martyred on one of his expeditions to the Muslim world. At the very least, he would be beatified for his conversion and holiness and zeal, not for his philosophical and evangelical creativity. 

BUT, here’s the twist. Llull’s system of summarizing concepts with symbols and then allowing logical and mathematical tools to link and manipulate them is the precursor to how computers communicate and process information today. AND, his concept that all the different realms of human knowledge are interconnected, consistent, and accessible – that all truth is related, and you can approach it from any branch of the whole tree – is the underlying principal behind all those LLM (“Large Language Model”) AI systems making waves these days. 

The difference: his thinking was always directed at discovering God. 

– Fr. Dominic 

Last week, I shared with you the Mission Statement of our diocese, as articulated by our Fourth Diocesan Synod held in 2017.  As a parish in the diocese, and not just any parish, but the Cathedral Parish, I made the case for seeing that mission as our mission as well.  With that I mind, I have decided to include this Mission Statement on the inside cover of our bulletin moving forward.  I would like to spend the next several weeks unpacking this Mission Statement, so that we have some clarity on what we are all about.  If you look to your left in the bulletin (if you are reading the print edition), please re-read the Mission Statement as we begin our reflection today.

Let me start with reflection on the first word: mission.  According to Father John Hardon’s Modern Catholic Dictionary, mission is defined as follows: “The term literally denotes ‘sending’ and covers a variety of meanings, all somehow expressing the idea of a going forth from one person to others in order to effect some beneficial change in their favor.”

As I mentioned in my previous article, it makes sense for the mission of our parish to be

in alignment with that of the diocese.  And since the diocese is one part of the larger body of the Church, it is important to ensure that our mission is in alignment with that of the Universal Church.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a good section on the mission of the Church in paragraphs 811-870.  But the Catechism sums up the mission with these words: “The ultimate purpose of mission is none other than to make men share in the communion between the Father and the Son in their Spirit of love.” (CCC 850)

Communion with the Blessed Trinity is the purpose of the mission, and everything that the Church teaches and does is in service of that communion.  Through prayer and the sacraments, we draw closer to God, which commits us to a life of charity toward our brothers and sisters.  When he does pastor installations throughout the diocese, Bishop Paprocki always likes to quote the words of Pope St. John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte, “On entering the New Millennium.”  The Holy Father wrote: “all pastoral initiatives must be set in relation to holiness.” (n. 30)  This is another way of summarizing the mission of the Church, and thus our diocese and our parish.  Everything that we do should, in some way, be set in relation to holiness, which is nothing more than sharing the life of communion with the Trinity.

Mission therefore is not first are foremost about going out and performing works of evangelization and charity, important as those tasks are to the life of the Church.  Our starting point is with God, from whom we draw the grace and strength to then share His love with the world around us, which in turn is at the service of our brothers and sisters seeking to love the Lord more in their lives and to one day become saints.  The mission therefore begins with God and ends with God.  That is a key aspect of mission that we should never forget.

One striking example of this is St. Teresa of Kolkata, better known as Mother Teresa.  The works of charity that she and her sisters have undertaken are heroic in many ways, serving the poorest of the poor.  But she knew that to carry out this demanding work, prayer always had to be their priority.  She demanded that the sisters spent time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament each morning, then receiving Christ in the Eucharist, before going out.  For it was only by spending time looking open Christ in prayer and receiving Him in their hearts that they would then be able to see Christ in His most distressing disguise in the poor.

By our spending time in prayer before the Lord and receiving Him in the Eucharist, we will better be able to see Christ in every person we encounter, hidden as He may seem, and we will be motivated share in the mission of bringing the love of Christ to them so that we may all one day be united together with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Heaven.

Father Alford  

Feast Day: June 23^rd

Our current culture puts a high value on the go-getter’s, self-starters, the self-made-man. Unfortunately, taken to an extreme, this way of operating runs up against the heart of our faith. Just consider Jesus’ words before His Passion: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” [John 15:5] But we could also look to Jesus’ example: He, God, still called men to follow after Him, called them to do the work of building His Kingdom and preaching the Gospel, and He still depends on His Church to continue that work!

But I suspect each of us could learn the same lesson without even reading the Gospel, by just looking into our own lives. Consider the places where you find yourself struggling. Perhaps it is with some project or responsibility. Perhaps it is in your life of prayer, or finding joy in your vocation. Perhaps it is in the face of a cross, a sickness, a burden, a loss. Just notice something that is currently causing you worry or unease, and I suspect that somewhere underneath that struggle is a sense of loneliness. Maybe we chose in some way to “go it alone”, to try and get through some part of our lives without relying on anyone else or without displaying weakness. But often there is no choice on our part to rely on our own effort or abilities, we just find ourselves trying to figure it out – desperate for help, wishing for a guide, hoping someone would come along a notice that we’re struggling … and support seems far away.

St. Joseph Cafasso, born in 1811 in the same village where St. John Bosco would be born a few years later, would become a support and guide not only for Bosco, but for countless others throughout his ministry as a priest. Bl. Pope Pius IX, chose to canonize St. John Vianney and beatify St. Joseph Cafasso together, placing these two priests side-by-side “one, the parish priest of Ars, as small and humble, poor and simple as he was glorious; and the other, a beautiful, great, complex and rich figure of a priest, the educator and formation teacher of priests, Venerable Joseph Cafasso.” It was a ministry of mentoring, of taking others under his wing, supporting and helping them, a beautiful ministry in an age already facing the alone-ness that has become rampant in ours.

Only four months after his ordination as a priest, in 1833, Fr. Cafasso began to work at the Convitto Ecclesiastico di S. Francesco d’Assisi [College-Residence for Clerics of St Francis of Assisi]. There he taught priests how to be spiritual fathers for their flocks. Perhaps they should have learned that in seminary, but the effects of Napoleon’s rampage through Europe a generation before had left those training-grounds for priests with limited faculty and impoverished formation, and now those priests were facing the continued social turmoil and challenges of a changing world as well as a rampant spirit of Jansenism infecting their people, and often themselves. (What is Jansenism? Combine a strong sense of human depravity with double-predestination as well as moral-rigidity and you’re not far from it.) It was a natural response to a world that was already at that time losing sight of God, rejecting the moral principles that had governed society for centuries, and growing worldliness. But the Church is not called to fight human sinfulness with human effort, and Fr. Cafasso knew it from experience.

He would visit the poorest homes he could find, calling the lice crawling over the walls “living silver and moving riches”. He would make his way to the dankest dungeons and work tirelessly to bring condemned prisoners to confession and the final sacraments before they went to the gallows. And, he spent hours every day in prayer, beginning day with Mass at 4:30, and lovingly teaching his weary brother priests a Christlike gentleness from the wisdom of St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Alphonsus Ligouri. “When we hear confessions, our Lord wants us to be loving and compassionate, to be fatherly towards all who come to us, without reference to who they are or what they have done … If we repel anybody, if any soul is lost through our fault, we shall be held to account—their blood will be upon our hands.” He would be a spiritual director for Don Bosco, and many others – guiding, encouraging, mentoring, fathering each of them, fathering the places in their hearts that were desperate for a father – especially those of his brother priests.

The Heavenly Father was very pleased with him!

– Fr. Dominic finds in St. Joseph Cafasso an exemplar of priestly fatherhood. On the one hand, his example challenges me: I want to support and guide people like him! But then I run smack-dab into the places where I still feel so insufficient, where I know I need help myself …  and then I recall his being the first in the chapel in the morning and last there each night. He needed to be fathered too, and turned constantly to his Heavenly Father for that guidance. But also, he went out of his way to ask others to guide him in his own weaknesses, like the saints mentioned above, as well as his own priests and teachers.

When the National Eucharistic Revival was launched, the plan called for three distinct phases:  1. Year of Diocesan Renewal, 2. Year of Parish Renewal,  and 3. Year of Mission.  Having just two weeks ago celebrated Corpus Christi Sunday, we have embarked on this third phase focusing on Mission.  Key events that will kickstart this year will be the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage (currently taking place) and the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis next month.

Although I do not plan to do an entire year-long series on mission, I do want to take some time reflecting on mission as our country focuses on this final phase of the Eucharistic Revival.  The first question that might be asked is:  What is our mission?  Many churches and organizations go through the process of crafting a mission statement to summarize what they are all about as an organization.  The work of preparing this statement can be a fruitful exercise.  Perhaps you may wonder:  Does the Cathedral have a mission statement?  As a matter of fact, we do!  It was not the fruit, however, of a long period of discernment among parishioners and our pastoral council.  Rather, our mission statement has, in a sense, been handed to us, wrapped up as a nice gift.  What I am talking about is the Mission Statement that was decided on as a result of our Fourth Diocesan Synod in 2017.  Here is what the Synod came up with:

The mission of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield in Illinois is to
build a fervent community of intentional and dedicated missionary
disciples of the Risen Lord and steadfast stewards of God’s creation who
seek to become saints. Accordingly, the community of Catholic faithful in
this Diocese is committed to the discipleship and stewardship way of life
as commanded by Christ Our Savior and as revealed by Sacred Scripture
and Tradition. 

(Synod Declaration 1a)

One might read this and think, “That’s the mission statement for the diocese, but what about the Cathedral Parish?”  My response is that it is one and the same.  As a parish in the Diocese of Springfield (incidentally also the mother parish of the diocese) it seems unnecessary to think of our mission as different than what has been given for the entire diocese as our mission.  So I have no problem simply accepting this overarching mission for the diocese as our mission for this parish.  To be sure, how that mission is put into practice will look different in each parish, but I think it is important to be clear on what our starting point is as we move forward.

Therefore, in this Year of Mission, we will be praying about and discerning how the Eucharist will be the “source and summit” of our mission, fueling us with God’s grace to live as His missionary disciples, then returning to the Eucharist each Sunday to give thanks for His many blessings which we offer to Him for the work of building His Kingdom.

As I said, I do not necessarily intend to spend the entire year just on this topic, but it is a theme I would like to give a significant amount of time to in my articles and in our efforts here over the next year.

Now seems to be a fitting time to remind everybody of the invitation that I made a couple of years ago, to pray three Hail Mary’s a day for the following intentions:  the parish, the clergy of the parish, and ourselves individually.  All of us play a role in this mission, so it is good for us to ask Mary’s intercession each day to help all of us in embracing this Year of Mission with faith, hope, and love.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: June 16^th 

About as far south as you can get in France without falling into the Mediterranean, or becoming Spain, is a little town named Fontcouverte. The population only crested 500 souls in the early 2000s, so in large part it looks just as picturesque as it did a few hundred years ago – simple brick homes, their copper-colored tile roofs gleaming as the sun sets, all of it perched on the side of the hill they call “La Vade”, and named after the Fontcalel which flows out from the village.

Probably that little place was as unscathed as one could be amidst the civil war tearing France apart in the late 1500s, but the unity and patriotism and confidence in the monarchy that had swelled in the years after St. Joan of Arc, had been all but shattered now 150 years later by the atrocities committed by Catholics against Protestants and vice versa. It’s true that right as Jean- François was born a truce was finally established as Henry IV secured the throne in 1598 (he, a Protestant, converting to Catholicism in order to do so, then re-establishing Catholicism as the religion of the realm, albeit granting the Huguenots/Protestants religious liberty). Little Jean’s dad had been part of the Catholic League which had fervently fought against King Henry until his conversion, so the family had gained a bit of noble standing from his service in that war. This mean that Jean was blessed with both a rich, and a firmly Catholic, education. He was growing up where many of the Protestants in France had settled, so though the country as a whole was 90% Catholic, his early years were certainly impacted by that disparity of faith all around him, and even if the war was over, the shells of burned churches and stories of murdered priests were not far in his past.

Growing up, he was inspired by the Jesuits who taught in his school, especially the stories of the great Jesuit missionaries like St. Francis Xavier who had died just 50 years before. The age of martyrs, of course, was not over (still isn’t, and never will be as it turns out for anyone who follows a Crucified Savior): Jean de Brébeuf was born just a few years before Jean-François, and Isaac Jogues would be born less than ten years after him, (all of these Jesuits from France). During his decade-plus of formation in the Society of Jesus, our Jean grew rapidly into a tremendous teacher of the faith, besides exemplifying a deep and wholehearted devotion to God as well as a tender heart for the poor and hurting. Surely these were the skills and gifts needed for a world – rapidly expanding – in which so many unknown people had never heard the Gospel. But when he was finally ordained a priest in 1632 his assignment was … to Montpellier, that’d be about 70 miles up the coast from where he was born, and his task … to work with fallen-away Catholics in those areas ravaged by the civil war the century before. 

It wasn’t as glamorous as Francis Xavier, and he wasn’t going to come home mutilated or martyred as would Brébeuf and Jogues and so many others. Nope, he was going to hear confessions before and after his morning Mass, visit the prisons and hospitals in the afternoon, try to get people to come to his formation-conferences in the evenings and try amidst the long days to exude kindness and compassion to widows, orphans, and others who had been neglected, or wounded, by the Church in all those horrible years before. He would endure not foreign jungles or horrendous passages across the ocean, just harsh winters and discouraging turnouts. He just went town to town and preached the Gospel – his words were poetic and moving when preaching at Mass, substantial but simple when he taught the faith on other occasions – and he just traveling ahead of his bishop to try and prepare people to hear from their shepherd and help them return to the sacraments after years far from them. His was the life and work of a pretty typical parish priest of today. 

And then one day, in front of the Church in Saint-Andé (a bit further south than even Fontcouverte), someone asked everyone who they were waiting for, and they said they were waiting for “the saint.” That’d be ‘Saint’ (not yet canonized, not yet dead) John Francis Regis who was coming for another parish mission. His simple words, sacrificial love, and prayerfulness had made an impact after all! And not like 50 years later either! Eight years after being ordained and beginning his circuit around that diocese he had a premonition that he wasn’t going to live much longer. He put his affairs in order, continued to preach about God’s love, and right after Christmas of 1640, he knew he was in his final hours. He spent December 31^st looking on the crucifix and simply prayed “Into thy hands I commend my spirit” before taking his final breath that evening. 

– Fr. Dominic is immensely inspired by this “ordinary” saint. Heroic virtue does not mean martyrdom or baptizing thousands; it mostly means consistent prayer, persevering in charity, and enduring the day’s burdens. All of us can manage that!